


From The Depths Two Pearls Did Spring

by khazadspoon



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, davy jones ish au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 03:45:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10845810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khazadspoon/pseuds/khazadspoon
Summary: The story goes that, many years ago, a man fell in love with the sea. Some say he loved a witch, some say a god, some say it is only metaphorical.None of those iterations are true.There was a man, and he did fall in love. But it is there the stories fall short.





	From The Depths Two Pearls Did Spring

The story goes that, many years ago, a man fell in love with the sea. Some say he loved a witch, some say a god, some say it is only metaphorical.

None of those iterations are true.

There was a man, and he did fall in love. But it is there the stories fall short.

He was a seaman, an officer in His Majesty’s Navy, respected and on his way to greatness. A rising star. Then he fell in love with a woman. They had an affair, passion and lust becoming love in short order. He also fell in love with her husband, a Lord, who spurned his title and family for the love of the officer.

After a brief time of happiness and great love between the three of them, the world intervened. Tragedy struck the lovers. Upon discovery of the affair, the Lord and Lady were hanged on a gallows overlooking the sea in Padstow, where they had moved to live in happiness and quiet with their lover. The officer, in his grief and despair, swam out to sea and drowned.

Years passed and the scandal was forgotten. But, on the tenth anniversary of the tragic event, a ghostly figure rose from the waves and wept at the gallows. For a single day and a single night he stood there, shrouded in black and dripping with water and seaweed. Two peas were left behind at the foot of the gallows, one white and one pink. The locals dared not touch the pearls for fear of incurring the wrath of the ghost.

But he did not appear again, not for another decade. And for a hundred years, on each tenth anniversary of that day, the ghostly figure would appear and place two pearls at the foot of the gallows, one white and one pink. Every ten years he would stand for a day and a night, wet and weeping, sometimes crying out words of revenge and remorse, and then disappear into the ocean again. The story became legend and the townsfolk lit a candle at the gallows each year on the same day in the hopes of appeasing the ghost and preventing his wrath.

On the centennial, one hundred years later, the ghost returned. A young man watched from the shadows as the ghost set the pearls down. He couldn’t see the ghost’s face, the dawn still forming around them, but he knew it was that very officer from the tales he had heard as a boy. The ghost started to speak.

“My loves, forgive me- I didn’t listen, Miranda, I didn’t heed your warnings and now… you are dead and I cannot go on.”

Straining to hear, the boy crept closer. At the edge of the shadows that concealed him, he watched in awe as the ghost looked to the sky and was finally revealed.

He was young, no grey in his red hair, a look of such torment and despair on his handsome features that almost made him hard to look upon. His eyes were bright and green, the colour shifting and changing like the sea. His tears were like sea foam on his cheeks and the boy almost wept with him. He couldn’t imagine feeling such sorrow, not even as an orphan.

But, as the ghost moaned and growled his grief, the shore behind him began to shimmer. Two figures, clothed in white raiment and shining softly as the dawn rose hand in hand and walked to the grassy ground beyond the sand. The figure on the left was a man, tall and golden, and he knelt at the officer’s side and touched his cheek. The boy watched the change on the officer’s face and almost gasped as he smiled.

“Grieve no more, James,” the tall man said, “we’ve come to bring you home.”

They embraced, sharing a soft kiss that seemed to wash the darkness from the officer’s form.

The lady called out to them, her voice soft and low as she called their names. James, the boy thought, was far too plain a name for such a ghost. The men went hand in hand to her and the three ghosts held on to one another like sailors holding a ship’s ropes during a storm. The boy watched as they walked arm in arm to the sea and disappeared into the surf.

No one believed his story when he returned home. They said that sinners don’t get happy endings. Ghosts are always sinners, they said, men of bad deeds and evil ends, and they were doomed to walk the earth until the end of days.

Ten years later, and now a man, he returned to his home town to see if the ghost had returned. When the sun rose he sat on the ground in the shadows and watched the sea. For an hour nothing happened. No sudden flashes, no figures appearing, not even the glimmer of a pearl at the foot of the gallows. The candle was there, blown out by the wind, but there was nothing else. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw three figures walking up the beach.

They were solid, not ghosts dressed in white or black, and he almost turned away. But one of them called the names of the others and he knew who they were.

“Thomas stop! You’ll get wet,” the woman called as the tall man, hair still golden, splashed in the rippling waves coming up the sand. “James bring him back. I’m not rubbing warmth back into his feet this year…”

James, the officer, laughed and ran after Thomas, spinning them around and splashing in the waves with him. “I’ll do it, gladly and with vigour!” He called back.

They walked past the one who watched them without a glance in his direction, laughing and joking with one another until they were out of sight.


End file.
